“It really was blood, I suppose? Not ketchup, or paint?”
“It was blood, all right. The same type as his. We don’t know his wife’s type; she never gave anything away, not even blood.”
The sergeant turned and paced the room, his large hands locked behind his back, his face grim. He paused and faced the sheriff. “And he did have a bad gash under that bandage. I think. I’d have preferred to believe him if he didn’t.” He shook his head, frowning. “More than ten days, and we’re where we were when we started. Even further behind, in fact. He’s having fun with us, I tell you!”
The sheriff bit at an outcropping of fingernail. “You got your warrant, though, didn’t you? I spoke to Judge—”
“Oh, we got the warrant, right enough,” the sergeant said darkly, and dropped into his chair, putting a knee against the edge of the desk. “And we dug up the cellar floor. And all we found was an elbow.”
“An elbow?” The sheriff sat more erect.
“A plumber’s elbow,” the sergeant said grimly. “Exactly as he told us. New. We dug another three feet down, too, down to solid rock — just in case. She certainly isn’t buried there, I can tell you that.”
“Could she have been buried there?”
“That I don’t know,” the sergeant said bitterly. “There was more than enough room, but we didn’t find any signs. All I know is that she isn’t buried there now.”
“Nor under the peach trees, either, I gather.”
“Nor under anything in the whole damned back yard, and we gave his tree roots all the air they could handle! Ten days and nothing at all!” He shook his head broodingly and then looked up. “Oh, yes. He put the house up for sale this morning. I spoke to Jimmy Glass at the bank; Crompton and his wife exchanged powers of attorney the day they got married, so that’s that.”
The sheriff frowned. “So what’s his explanation as to his wife’s disappearance?”
“He finally broke down and confessed,” the sergeant said bitterly. “According to Charley, they had this big quarrel he was ashamed to admit, and she just up and walked out on him — and of course his pride would never allow him to tell perfect strangers like us about it. They fought and she just upped and away, like that.”
“And disappeared into thin air?”
“His idea, or what he says is his idea — is that she probably got to the highway and some kindly soul in a car or a truck picked her up and gave her a lift. That was his second idea. His first was that she caught a Greyhound bus, until I told him we’d checked all the buses. He says he has no idea where she’d head for, but he doesn’t expect her back because she’s stubborn. He says maybe she went to her brother’s, but he honestly doesn’t know the address. Just John Brown, in Chicago.” He snorted. “And all we got from the cops there, when we asked, were a couple of wisecracks. For which I don’t blame them.”
The sheriff drummed his fingers. “So what’s your idea?”
“My idea,” the sergeant began slowly, and then stopped as the telephone at his elbow rang. He picked it up. “Hello?” He cupped the receiver and shook his head dolefully at the sheriff. “Our man on the scene.” He uncupped the receiver. “No, Mrs. Williams. No, Mrs. Williams. Yes, Mrs. Williams. Yes, we are, Mrs. Williams. As much as we can, ma’am. Yes, Mrs. Williams. Yes, we will, Mrs. Williams.” He put the receiver back in its cradle and sighed.
“Mrs. Williams,” he said, and raised his eyes to the ceiling. “What a woman! She called the other day, all excited. It seems Charley Crompton thought she wasn’t home, because he came over and rang her bell and tried to look in the windows. She kept out of sight and then he went back to his house and came out with something bulky and big and put it in the trunk of his car and drove off, and she called us at once. And when we got there, Charley was back, and he had mud all over his tires, red clay like we have down at Wiley Creek, and we searched his trunk, but we never came up with a thing.”
“So what’s your idea?”
“My idea,” the sergeant said, staring at the girly calendar on the wall without seeing it, “is that Charley Crompton has gotten away with murder. My idea is that his wife is buried somewhere in the woods and that, if we ever find her, it will be sheer luck. And that without her body we’re in trouble. We don’t have a case and we don’t have a chance of holding him. My idea is that he went through that rigamarole of digging up trees and ruining a perfect concrete floor because he wanted to rub our noses in a perfect crime.”
“Or because it gave him a chance to misdirect your attention while he had her body stored away somewhere else.” The sheriff shook his head. “I still can’t believe a mouse like Charley Crompton would have the nerve, though, to do a thing like that.”
“Believe it,” the sergeant said shortly.
“So what do we do?”
The young sergeant swiveled his chair, staring through the window at the deserted square before the old courthouse.
“We wait,” he said heavily. “We wait until some Boy Scouts on a hike, or some gang out on a picnic, or some kids necking, or some curious dog, makes what the newspapers call ‘a gruesome discovery.’ Because one thing is certain: whether she was buried in that house or in that yard at one time or another, she isn’t buried there now. That’s about the only thing that is certain.”
The sheriff sighed and swung around and back in his swivel chair.
The mean, petulant, whining voice carried through the still night, threading its way from the garage through the back yard to the house, out-cricketing the crickets. There was an air of continuity about it, as if it had been going on for some time and would continue to go on indefinitely, or until a stop were put to it.
“...certainly pure nonsense to pick me up in Joliet three stations down the line when the train stops here just as well, same as it was silly to put me on the train there, as if gasoline grew on trees, but of course that wouldn’t bother you none — none of it comes out of your pockets and why you insisted on my visiting your mother in the first place heaven only knows, there isn’t a thing wrong with her except she’s spoiled the way old women are spoiled and she dotes on her darling Charley — darling Charley this darling Charley that — and how her darling Charley could have had any girl he ever wanted, which simply goes to show she doesn’t know her darling Charley as well as I do and three weeks with her in that horrible house was no pleasure, locked in that mausoleum with no newspapers, no radio, no television, I don’t know how she stands it but you never care what I go through just as long as you get your way — well, that was the last time and if I find you’ve been up to your usual tricks with girls while I was gone, you’ll regret it and you’ll regret it where it hurts the most, in the pocketbook.”
The gate from the garage to the back yard was opened and closed again.
“...and for heaven’s sake what on earth has happened to that peach tree excavated out of the ground and that lantern alongside? I hope you realize that Chaber’s Hardware doesn’t give kerosene free and if you want to transplant a tree, the least you can do is do it during the daylight though why you should want to do it at all I can’t imagine, the peach trees have been fine ever since I remember — in any event, I want it replanted immediately tomorrow, do you hear? I don’t want it lying around and I don’t want all that dirt to be tracked into my clean house—”
The kitchen door was swung back; the voice continued, an acid eating through Charley’s eardrums.